Hot Money

by Sherryl Woods

  “Liza, where did you go after you spoke with us? Is that when you ran into Roger?”

  Liza shook her head, her expression thoughtful. “Not right away. I think there was a crisis of some sort,” she said slowly. “Yes, I remember now. Neville was complaining about the champagne.”

  “The champagne?” Michael repeated. “What was wrong with it? It tasted great to me.”

  “No, no,” Liza said. “The champagne was donated, but we had to pay corkage. Do you know what that is?”

  Michael shook his head.

  “It means we had to pay him a small fee for every bottle opened, even though he didn’t supply it. It’s standard with a lot of hotels and caterers when dealing with charity functions that get donated wine or champagne. Obviously, they’d rather supply it themselves at some exorbitant rate, but some will bend their rules if you pay the corkage fee.”

  “Sounds like a rip-off,” Michael observed, “But I get it. So what was the crisis?”

  “We were supposed to have someone standing by all evening to assure that the number of bottles he said he served were actually served. Otherwise we could be overcharged in corkage. It’s a pain in the neck, but we insisted.”

  “Trusting group, aren’t you?”

  “When you have to account for every penny to a coalition board the way we do, you can’t afford to be sloppy.”

  “Okay, so this person was missing. Who was supposed to be there?”

  “I’m not sure. We’d rotated the assignment so no one would have to spend all evening in the catering tent. I can’t recall who was supposed to be there. I grabbed someone to fill in until the next person showed up.”

  “Can you find out who was missing?”

  “Sure. The subcommittee chair for the catering should have a list. Patrice never lets details like this slip.”

  Molly was instantly alert. “Patrice MacDonald?”

  Liza nodded. “Why are you looking like that?”

  “Don’t you see? If she was in and out of the catering tent all evening, she would have had ample opportunity to snatch that candlestick. And if she’d been assigned to that particular hour herself and disappeared …” She allowed her voice to trail off so they could get the implications all on their own. They didn’t fail her.

  “Molly, you could be right. It fits with everything we know about Clark Dupree and Tessa, the spat Patrice had with Tessa in Bal Harbour, everything,” Liza enthused.

  “Slow down,” Michael said. “We don’t have proof of anything here. We don’t even know for sure that the candlestick was the murder weapon. It might not even have been stolen in the first place. Maybe it was just misplaced and this caterer got all bent out of shape for nothing. He seemed like the excitable type.”

  “He is that,” Liza conceded.

  “Call him,” Molly said. “Ask him if the candlestick has turned up. Liza, you have the number, don’t you?”

  “Absolutely.” She reached into her voluminous purse and drew out a bulging date book that contained an entire section for names and addresses, as well as business cards. It was so well organized that she found the number before Michael could even register a halfhearted protest.

  Molly shot him a challenging look. “If you don’t call, I will.”

  To her surprise, Michael nodded. “Maybe that would be better. He’d be less likely to be on guard with you or Liza. In fact, Liza ought to be the one to call. As a member of the committee, surely you would be interested in whether the candlestick had been recovered.” He studied her intently. “Can you pull it off?”

  “I don’t see why not,” she said confidently, reaching for the phone. After schmoozing with some underling, she got the caterer on the line. “Neville, darling, it’s Liza Hastings. How are you?”

  Molly couldn’t hear his response, but judging from the way Liza was gazing heavenward, he was giving her an earful about his current travails.

  “I’m so sorry,” she murmured with a certain lack of sincerity. “Getting decent help is a problem. Listen, darling, the reason I called is that I need to know when you’ll get that final bill to us. We want to settle all the accounts before our next board meeting so we’ll know how the event did.”

  She nodded at his answer. “Friday is terrific. By the way, did that candlestick ever turn up? I know how valuable it was.” Her expression changed to one of astonishment. “It did? When?” She glanced pointedly at Michael. “You found it in your office. How odd. How do you suppose it got there? Or was it there all along?”

  Molly’s spirits sank, but Michael was still watching Liza intently. If he could have, he would have grabbed the phone out of her hand and finished the interrogation himself. Instead, he had to rely on Liza’s quick wits to get whatever answer he was after.

  “Has anyone from the committee stopped by in the last couple of days?” Liza asked, earning a beaming smile of approval from Michael. “Oh, really. Patrice came by first thing Monday morning. Darling, you didn’t happen to notice whether that candlestick was there before she came by, did you?”

  Liza’s eyes lit with excitement. “Thanks, Neville. Everything was spectacular on Saturday. You’re a genius. I’ll stop by for the bill on Friday.”

  She put the receiver back on the hook with careful deliberation, then gave them a smug look. “Bingo.”

  “The candlestick suddenly materialized after Patrice’s visit?” Molly said.

  “That’s what he seems to recall. Hopefully, he won’t figure out quite why I wanted to know. If he does, he’s likely to call Patrice and warn her. She sends a lot of business his way. He’ll warn her out of loyalty or maybe just because it seems like a great tidbit of gossip to pass on.”

  Michael nodded grimly. “Then I suggest we pay a visit to Mrs. MacDonald first. I’ll call Abrams and tell him what’s happening. Molly, is Brian around?”

  “He’s at the pool.”

  “Then get him while I call Abrams. I haven’t forgotten about that talk we intended to have. We’ll go on to dinner after we’ve stopped by Mrs. MacDonald’s. Liza, are you coming?”

  “I wouldn’t miss it,” she said, then glanced at Molly. “On second thought, if you all have things to talk about …”

  “Come,” Molly said, latching on to the excuse to avoid a conversation about marriage with a man who was being strong-armed into proposing.

  Liza shook her head. “I’ll take my car to Patrice’s. Then you all can go on to dinner without me.”

  Molly decided it was pointless to argue once Liza had made up her mind and foolish to give up the opportunity to hear Michael’s insights on the custody mess. “Your car or mine?” she asked Michael.

  “Mine. I left it in the circle out front. The guard will have it towed if I don’t move it soon.”

  “Nestor wouldn’t dream of it,” Molly told him. “He’s probably out there polishing it for you as we speak. Ever since you solved the murder of our condo president, our security chief has regarded you as his idol. He told Brian that.”

  Michael looked embarrassed at the thought that a former Nicaraguan freedom fighter would consider him a hero. “I’ll meet you down there in five minutes. Liza, we’ll see you at Mrs. MacDonald’s. Wait for us to go in.”

  Liza snapped off a salute.

  As it turned out, it hardly mattered who arrived first. Patrice MacDonald wasn’t home, according to the housekeeper who answered the door. She cast a sly, approving glance at Michael. He smiled the killer-megawatt smile that encouraged confessions and probably seductions, Molly thought grumpily. At any rate it appeared to be working on the housekeeper. She was volunteering information in Spanish at a clip that was totally beyond Molly’s comprehension.

  “She went where?” Liza suddenly blurted, drawing a warning glance from Michael.

  “What?” Molly demanded.

  Michael finally thanked the disappointed housekeeper and said good night. He turned around. “It seems that Mrs. MacDonald is in Europe. Paris, possibly. Maybe Rome. Could be London.�
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  “In other words, she’s skipped the country.”

  “Indeed.”

  “That certainly puts a new wrinkle into things, doesn’t it?” Molly muttered.

  “It’s certainly beginning to make her look guilty as hell, especially if these vague travel plans of hers were made in the past forty-eight hours or so. Any clue who her travel agent might be?”

  Liza retrieved her overstuffed notebook and thumbed through it. “Here’s the woman most everyone in Coral Gables society circles uses. I can’t swear that Patrice did, but it’s worth a shot.”

  “I don’t suppose you have her home number,” Michael said.

  “Of course,” Liza said. “What good is a travel agent if you can’t get her in the middle of the night?”

  “Obviously Patrice is of the same mind,” Molly noted as Michael dialed the number on his cellular phone. She listened intently to his conversation with the travel agent. It wasn’t going nearly as well as he might have liked.

  “No, ma’am,” he said politely, but firmly. “You don’t have the same sort of privileged information situation that an attorney would have. You can make this difficult, but I will get a subpoena. Your boss might not like the fact that an employee did not cooperate with the police, especially when that fact is likely to turn up splashed all over tomorrow morning’s newspaper.”

  Molly grinned at the thought of Michael actually divulging information to Ted Ryan intentionally. Fortunately, it appeared it wouldn’t come to that. He was murmuring approvingly at whatever the woman was telling him. “Yes, thank you. You’ve been a tremendous help.”

  As soon as he’d hung up, he said, “London. It was the first flight the agent could get her on Monday.”

  “Then it hadn’t been planned.”

  “Nope. In fact, the poor old girl had to fly coach.”

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  Molly tried to envision Patrice MacDonald murdering Tessa, then jetting off to hide out in some cottage in the Cotswolds or having afternoon tea at some swank London hotel. It was a difficult image to conjure up. However, if Patrice actually had intentionally left the rest of them to muster up alibis and undergo police interrogations, Molly could think of a few hundred people who might want to buy round-trip tickets to England themselves just so they could tell Patrice what they thought of her before dragging her back for prosecution.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Liza said, echoing Molly’s thoughts. “Patrice doesn’t strike me as the sort of woman who’d skip the country to avoid being charged with a crime. She’s so arro-gant, she’d be convinced she could hire a hotshot defense lawyer and beat the rap.”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Michael said, already punching in what Molly suspected was Detective Abrams’s number.

  “Will he fly over to question her?” Molly asked when he’d explained the situation to the Miami detective and hung up again.

  “If he eventually has enough evidence against her, yes. If it’s all circumstantial—and for the moment it is—he figures the brass will want him to wait until he digs up something more solid before going after a woman with her standing in the community.”

  “Like what? A witness who saw her club Tessa with that candlestick?” Molly said derisively. “We already know no one saw that.”

  “Do we?” Michael said.

  Molly’s gaze narrowed. “Is there a witness?”

  “Let’s just say that no one has come forward at this time. That doesn’t mean that someone didn’t see the murderer and Tessa together instants before the crime and just hasn’t put the two things together yet. Or perhaps he or she is holding out to protect the killer.”

  “So we just sit around and wait?” Liza said dejectedly.

  Molly shared her impatience. “Couldn’t we do something in the meantime? Maybe give Patrice a call?” she suggested hopefully.

  “Absolutely not,” Michael said.

  “But we could sound her out, see what her mood is, determine if she’s on the run.”

  Michael grinned despite himself. “You sound like a bad TV script.”

  Liza scowled at him. “It is entirely possible that she simply decided to go on a shopping spree or that she hadn’t had a decent scone in months. Maybe she’s merely soothing her ego after the way Clark Dupree betrayed her. That sounds more like Patrice.”

  “Why are you making excuses for her?” Michael asked. “A few minutes ago you were ready to hang her.”

  “We weren’t ready to hang her,” Molly retorted defensively, knowing full well that they had been. They had latched on to Patrice as the killer faster than old Roger had made his unexpected moves on Liza. “We just got caught up in the way all the evidence was pointing. Now that we’ve had time to think it through, it doesn’t make sense. I can’t see a woman like Patrice clubbing Tessa over the head and shoving her into the bay to die.”

  “I hope you won’t mind if I don’t report your change of heart to Detective Abrams,” Michael said.

  The remark seemed a little snide to Molly. “Maybe you should. He shouldn’t waste all his energy chasing the wrong suspect, while the real murderer gets away.”

  While all three adults in the car scowled at each other, Brian scrambled from the back of the wagon to the front. “Are we ever gonna eat?” he inquired plaintively. “I’m starved.”

  “Soon,” Molly murmured distractedly. “Liza, did Patrice take off like this all the time?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Michael nodded reluctantly. “You’re wondering if this is just the way she deals with any little upset in her life, by taking a European holiday?”

  “Exactly. Maybe the travel agent could tell you that.”

  “I’ll try,” he said and called the woman back. He apologized for intruding again on her evening. “I just got to wondering if Mrs. MacDonald was in the habit of taking unexpected trips like this.”

  Apparently the answer was a terse and emphatic no.

  “She’s never been this impulsive, then?” he said. “Okay, thanks. By the way, what was the name of the hotel where you said she always stays in London? Got it,” he said, scribbling it down. “Thanks.”

  He met Liza and Molly’s disappointed gazes evenly. “She has never taken a vacation without meticulously planning it ahead of time. The travel agent said she was thoroughly flustered when she called Monday morning and insisted only that she be on a flight by that night. She didn’t even seem to care where it took her. Nor, by the way, did she book the return flight. The ticket is open-ended.”

  “Let Liza call her,” Molly coaxed, more convinced than ever that Patrice hadn’t fled to escape prosecution for Tessa’s murder. “Patrice would stare down any judge or jury that tried to convict her. On the other hand, flight might well be the response of a woman whose pride was in tatters. Liza might be able to get her to open up. She could say she was calling about committee business that couldn’t wait.” Molly glanced at Liza. “Couldn’t you even manufacture an emergency meeting of the coalition board? Patrice wouldn’t miss that.”

  “I could,” Liza said, regarding Michael intently. “I was going to schedule one for the end of this week or the beginning of next anyway. I could tell her that, ask when would be best for her. That would tell us when she plans to be back. What do you think?”

  After several moments of thoughtful deliberation, he held out the slip of paper and the cellular phone. “Give it a try.”

  Liza took down the name of the London hotel, but shook her head. “Not now. With the time difference it’s the middle of the night. With all the traveling I do, she knows I’d know that and wouldn’t risk waking her unless something dreadful had happened. We don’t want her getting suspicious and running, if she is guilty.”

  “You’re right,” Michael agreed. “You’ll call her first thing in the morning, then?”

  “First thing, her time,” Liza said. “I’m never in bed before two or three in the morning anyway. She ought to be sipping her
morning tea about then.”

  “You’ll beep me?” he said. “No matter what time it is?”

  Liza grinned at him. “You’ll be the first to know.” She glanced at Molly. “Or at least the second.”

  “First,” he insisted.

  “You could hear the news together,” she suggested with a sly wink as she slid out of the car. “Bye-bye. Enjoy your dinner.”

  Molly glanced at Michael to see how he was taking Liza’s innuendo. His lips were twitching, as if he was trying very hard to control a grin.

  “First your son, now your best friend,” he said idly. “A man could begin to wonder if the whole family intends to gang up on him.”

  “Not mine,” Molly said with absolute certainty, imagining her parents’ outrage at the mere idea of her being married to a lowly cop. “They’re still holding out for me to stop all this independent foolishness and go back to Hal.”

  Michael regarded her in astonishment. “They took his side in the divorce?”

  “They took his side from the day I met him. In fact, that probably had a lot to do with why we got married in the first place. They were ecstatic that a man of his obvious promise and ambition wanted me.” Since she couldn’t hide her bitterness over that, she glanced pointedly at Brian, who was playing with one of his hand-held computer games. “Could we talk about something else, please?”

  Michael reached across and squeezed her hand. The sympathetic gesture immediately brought the sting of tears to her eyes. Apparently he saw them.

  “Molly?” he said gently. “You okay?”

  She gave him a watery, forced smile. “Just terrific. I’ll be even better once I have a plateful of pasta in front of me. Comfort food, right?”

  “So they say,” he said. “I always thought it was black beans and rice.”

  She grinned at the cultural variations between them. “In actual fact, I always reach for hot, yeasty bread. I can remember our housekeeper baking every Friday so we’d have homemade bread and rolls for the weekend. She used to let me sit in the kitchen. Later, whenever I felt down or lonely, that’s where I’d go and Arnetta would pull out the flour and the yeast and start baking up a storm.” It occurred to her that she wouldn’t mind sitting in that kitchen right now with Arnetta mothering her.